The scissors were dull, salvaged from a ransacked pharmacy three districts back.
Nana didn't care.
She grabbed a fistful of her long hair—hair that Mina used to brush when they sat together in quiet moments, hair that Mina would scold her about when it got tangled from fighting—and cut.
The dark strands fell to the ground like pieces of her old self.
"Your hair is so soft, Nana. Like silk. You should take better care of it."
Cut.
"Ugh, look at this rat's nest! Did you fight a hybrid with your head? Sit still, let me fix it."
Cut.
"There. Much better. You're actually pretty when you're not covered in demon blood, you know."
By time she finished, her hair barely reached her shoulders, choppy and uneven because she'd done it without a mirror, without care, just hacking away memories with every snip.
She looked at her reflection in a broken window—a stranger stared back. Eyes cold as winter ice. Face streaked with old blood she hadn't bothered to wash off. Hair brutally short.
Good, she thought. That girl with long hair died in the fire. This is someone else.
Someone stronger.
Someone who wouldn't feel the pain of losing everyone she loved.
She shouldered her pack—lighter now, with fewer supplies but more weapons—and walked to where she'd hidden her latest find: a motorcycle.
It's shouldn't work. Most vehicles in Avalon were dead, their engines seized, their fuel evaporated by the city's impossible physics. But this one—a heavy touring bike she'd found in an underground garage—had started on the third try, roaring to life like a gift from whatever cruel gods watched over this nightmare.
Nana kicked the stand and mounted, feeling the familiar weight settle beneath her.
The engine's rumble was almost comforting, a sound of power and motion in a city of death and stillness.
Where was she going?
Nowhere. Everywhere. It didn't matter.
She was hunting.
Three weeks since Mina died.
Nana had lost count of her kills.
Demons, hybrids, corrupted humans, monsters she didn't have names for—if it attacked her, she killed it. If it looked like it might attack her, she killed it preemptively.
The rage that had consumed her in the burning hospital had settled into something colder, more sustainable. Not fury anymore. Just... emptiness. A void where emotions used to be, filled only with the mechanical drive to survive and kill.
Be the strongest or die, she repeated to herself constantly. Mina's last lesson, distilled to its essence. No mercy. No hesitation. Kill or be killed.She rode through District 19 now, a maze of collapsed buildings and narrow alleys that most survivors avoided because the giants nested here. Giants—fifteen-foot-tall humanoids with misshapen bodies and boulder-sized fists that could crush cars.
Nana had killed two already this week.
She was hunting for a third.
The motorcycle weaved through the rubble with practiced ease, Nana's hunter reflexes translating perfectly to navigation. She could feel the giant before she saw it—that particular vibration through the ground, the displacement of air from something massive moving.
There.
The creature emerged from behind a collapsed apartment complex, its roar shaking loose concrete from nearby buildings. It saw her, and its primitive brain processed: prey.
The giant throw a chunk of concrete the size of a refrigerator and threw.
Nana gunned the engine, the motorcycle shooting forward. The boulder crashed where she'd been a heartbeat before, cratering the asphalt.
Another boulder. Another dodge, this one closer—debris peppered her back like shrapnel.
The motorcycle skidded as Nana yanked it into a sharp turn, heading straight for the giant now. Her massive sword was already in her hand, aether core flaring blue around the blade.
Twenty meters. Fifteen. Ten.
The giant swung its fist downward, trying to swat her like an insect
She jumped, abandoning the motorcycle mid-motion. The bike crashed and exploded behind her as the giant's fist connected, but she was already airborne, sword raised, aether core blazing.
She came down on the giant's shoulder, blade sinking deep into the meat of its neck. The creature roared, thrashing. Nana held on, pulling the sword free and striking again.
Again. Again.
Precision strikes, just like a surgeon. Just like—
Don't think about him. Focus.
The giant collapsed, dissolving into white mist before it hit the ground.
Nana landed in a crouch, breathing hard, her aether core flickering from the exertion.
No time to rest. Movement to her left—horse-headed hybrids, a pack of three, drawn by the noise.
She met their charge head-on.
Roll under the first one's weapon, hamstring slash as she passed. Kick to the second one's knee, shattering the joint. Sword through the third one's skull before it could react.
The first hybrid, crippled but still dangerous, lunged with its claws. Nana caught its arm, twisted, felt bones break, then slammed it face-first into the asphalt with enough force to crack concrete.
Her sword finished it.
Black blood painted the street, her clothes, her face. She wiped her blade clean mechanically, already scanning for the next threat.
These demons bit her. These creatures killed Mina. Every single one I kill is revenge. Every single one—
"NANA!"sword raised, aether core flaring—
Nothing. Just empty street and dissolving bodies.
I'm hearing things now, she realized distantly. Stress. Exhaustion. Grief.
But the voice had sounded so real. So desperate. So... familiar?
She shook her head, dismissing it. Hallucinations were dangerous in Avalon.
They got you killed.
She retrieved what supplies she could salvage from the motorcycle wreck—not much, but enough—and continued on foot.
The convenient store she'd spotted earlier was three blocks north. Might have food. Might have medicine.
Might have more things to kill.
.
.
.
.
.
The poison came without warning.
One moment, Nana was approaching the store, scanning for threats. The next, the sky had taken on that sickly green tinge she'd learned to fear.
No. Not now. Not—
The Flying Deer Spirit materialized overhead, its crystalline antlers catching the diseased light, its mouth opening to release the green mist.
Nana ran.
Not away—there was nowhere to run that would be safe. She run into the convenient store, hoping the building's structure would provide some protection, buy her time to find shelter that could be sealed.
She crashed through the broken doors just as the mist rolled in behind her.
Cough.
The first breath of it was like inhaling broken glass. Nana's vision immediately started to blur, her lungs burning. She stumbled deeper into the store, trying to find a back room, somewhere with fewer openings—
Cough cough.
Her legs gave out. She hit the floor hard, her sword clattering beside her.
Around her, she could hear monsters dying—hybrids that had been sheltering in the store, a demon that had been hunting in the back.
The poison didn't discriminate. It killed everything.
Mina said... hallucinations first... then death...
Nana's vision was swimming now, colors bleeding together. She tried to activate her aether core, tried to protect herself, but it flickered weakly and died. Too depleted from constant fighting, not enough energy left.
That its..she thought with strange calm. I'm going to die here. Going to see Mina again. Maybe that's not so bad.
She could see her now—Mina standing in the green mist, smiling that warm smile.
"Not yet, little sister. You promised to find Zayne, remember?"
I'm sorry, Mina. I tried. I'm so tired.
"I know. But he's close. So close. Just hold on a little longer."
Footsteps. Heavy, running. Real?
Hallucination?
Through her blurring vision, Nana saw a figure emerge from the poison mist. Tall. Dark hair. Moving with purpose.
He dropped to his knees beside her, and she saw his face.
Zayne.
But It was impossible. She was hallucinating. Had to be. The poison made you see things that weren't real before you died.
The figure was saying something, his mouth moving urgently. She couldn't hear him over the ringing in her ears. His expression—panicked, frightened, desperate—looked so real. So perfectly like Zayne if he ever broke his icy composure.
His hand moved to her cheek, and she felt it—cool fingers against her burning skin. That familiar cold that she associated with his ice evol.
So detailed, she thought distantly. My brain is giving me what I want most. One last hallucination before I die.
She tried to smile at hallucination-Zayne, tried to tell him she was glad he was the last thing she'd see.
But darkness was rushing in too fast. Her eyes closed.
And the last thing she registered was cold—spreading through her body, fighting against the poison, ice crystallizing in her lungs in a way that shouldn't work but somehow did.
And a voice, desperate and real and achingly familiar:
"Don't you dare die on me, Nana. Not after I've spent three years searching for you. Don't you dare."
.
.
.
.
.
To be continued.